the Holy Spirit was communicated to his Apostles in a visible symbol on the day of Pentecost, by which they were endued with the gift of speaking various languages which they had never learned, and were furnished with many other gifts and powers, by which they were qualified to propagate the Gospel in the world, and to exhibit a most satisfactory and public proof of the resurrection of their master from the dead.

We maintain that Jesus and his Apostles were supernaturally instructed as far as was necessary for the execution of their commission; that is, for the revelation and proof of the doctrine of eternal life; and that the favour of God extended to the Gentiles equally with the Jews: and that Jesus and his Apostles, and others of the primitive believers, were occasionally inspired to foretell future events. But we believe that supernatural inspiration was limited to those cases alone: and that when Jesus or his Apostles deliver opinions upon subjects unconnected with the object of their mission, such opinions, and their reasonings upon them, are to be received with the same attention and caution with those of other persons in similar circumstances, of similar education, and with similar habits of thinking.

We admit that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, and especially the latter, contain authentic records of facts, and of divine interposi

tions; but we utterly deny the universal inspiration of the writers of those compositions, as a qualification to which indeed they make no pretension, and of which they offer no proof; and the assertion of which tends only to embarrass the evidences of revelation, and to give advantage to its enemies. And we judge of the genuineness, of the meaning, and of the credibility, of these works, exactly in the same way as we judge of any other ancient writing.

We believe that Jesus continued to maintain, occasionally at least, some personal and sensible connection with the church during the apostolic age, which he expressly promised to do (Matt. xxviii. 20.); and in this way we account for the continuance of those miraculous gifts and powers which were exercised in his name while the Apostles lived, and also for occasional personal appearances and interpositions, which have never occurred since; but we believe that he is now withdrawn from all sensible intercourse with this world, though some have conjectured that he may still be actually present in, and attentive to, its concerns.

We believe, also, that Christ is appointed to raise the dead, and to judge the world. With regard to the former, we believe him to be the instrument of his Father's power. With respect to the latter, whether the declarations concerning it are to be understood literally or figuratively

whether Jesus will be personally invested with some high official character, or whether nothing more is intended than that the final states of men shall be awarded agreeably to the declarations of the Gospel, cannot, we think, at present be ascertained. Probably, as is usual with prophetic language, the event will be very different from what the literal sense of the words would lead us to expect. But whatever be the meaning of the declaration, the part which Jesus will bear in it will, we are confident, be no more than what may be properly allotted to a human being1; and in the execution of which his Apostles and Disciples will, it is said, be associated with him.2

While we bow to the authority of Jesus as the great prophet of the Most High, and receive with implicit submission whatever appears to us to have the sanction of divine authority,-while we regard the character of Christ as the most complete and the most interesting that was ever exhibited to the world, — while we feel ourselves under an indispensable obligation to obey the precepts of his Gospel, and, after his example, to diffuse to the utmost of our ability the knowledge of truth and the practice of virtue; we disavow all those personal regards to Christ, and direct addresses to him, either of prayer or praise, which properly fall under the definition

John, v. 27.

2 Matt. xix. 28. 1 Cor. vi. 2, 3.

of religious worship, as unfounded in reason, unauthorised by Scripture, derogatory from the honour of the Supreme Being, the only proper object of religious homage, and as in a strict and proper sense polytheistical and idolatrous. And. in this case, so far from being conscious of any wilful derogation from the honour due to Christ, whom we acknowledge and venerate as our Lord and Master, we are fully persuaded we act in perfect conformity to his authority and example, and in a manner of which he himself would testify the most entire approbation, if he were to appear in person upon earth.

We think it superfluous to produce any arguments to prove that a person, who is repeatedly called a man, —who had every appearance of a human being, —who was born, who grew, who lived, who conversed, who felt, who acted, who suffered, and who died like other men, -who was universally allowed to be a man by all who saw and conversed with him,—and who was addressed and spoken of as a human being by all his contemporaries, whether friends or enemies, was really what he appeared, and affirmed himself to be, truly and properly a man, and nothing more than a man. This is a fact which must be admitted without hesitation, unless the most unequivocal and decisive evidence can be produced to the contrary. And surely a fact so astonishing, and so contrary to experience and

analogy, as the incarnation of a superior spirit is not to be received on the authority of oblique hints, or of obscure, figurative, and ambiguous phraseology, but that it is reasonable to expect that the evidence of such a fact should be clear and decisive in proportion to its antecedent improbability. Now, after the closest examination of the Scriptures, we find no such clear and satisfactory evidence. As to the passages which have been adduced by the several witnesses, in which Jesus represents himself as having descended from heaven, they signify nothing more than the divine original of his doctrine; that where he is represented as the Maker of all things, the new creation only is intended; that is, the new state of things which he was commissioned to introduce into the moral world; and that the creation of natural objects is no where attributed to Christ. And with respect to the title of "God," if it ever be applied to Christ in the New Testament (which we deny), it is only in the sense in which Moses is said to have been a god to Pharaoh, that is, as being invested with a divine commission and a power of working miracles in proof of it. We declare that the same, nay even stronger, expressions are applied to Christians in general, than those from which the deity of Christ is usually inferred. And, lastly, we maintain that the creation and support of the natural world and its inhabitants is uniformly ascribed to God; that there is no evi